American Dream

Flying Into Love, Book 8

By: C F White

Narrated by: Piers Ryman

Length: 10 hrs and 42 mins

Publisher's summary

Can acting out the American dream with his dad's best friend change an unyielding fantasy into reality?

Eddie Brownlee's Hollywood dreams turn into a nightmare when his safety is threatened.

Lee Everett, his father's best friend, steps in as his reluctant bodyguard, stirring up unexpected emotions.

As they navigate the desert landscape, stuffed together in the cramped trailers of Hollywood's filming locations, Eddie's long-standing crush on his dad's old adventurer buddy complicates things. Especially when Eddie ignites something in Lee he'd thought he'd buried.

Struggling between desire and duty, Lee faces a whirlwind of emotions that could threaten everything he holds dear.

Including Eddie's life.
American Dream is an age gap, dad's best friend, forced proximity, bi awakening standalone MM romance novel in the steamy Flying into Love series featuring a lawyers son determined to make it big and an ex-firearms cop on a late path to self-discovery.

©2024 C F White (P)2024 C F White

Age gap, dad's best friend.

I have sort of mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand I loved it, it kept me glued to my Kindle to see how things between Eddie and his lifelong crush, and his dad’s best friend, Lee, would develop. On the other hand, I wanted to scream in frustration at the unfairness of their situation, Lee’s hesitancy and outside world interference. I guess I am just the kind of girl that doesn’t think or consider any obstacles where love is concerned, so the (very reasonable) reasons that hindered or delayed their being together just made me want to scream and cry in frustration.
I loved Eddie, he is young but very mature for his age, having had to grow up way too soon, and he is the one keeping a level head while Lee, let’s face it, has more than one freakouts throughout the book. Honestly, though, trying to keep Eddie alive and safe while figuring out his feelings for him and questioning his loyalty to his best friends may not have been the easiest of things.

I love this series!

CF’s series has been a wonderful journey around the world – Australia, Greece, Spain, Jersey, Scotland, Ireland, and France. Now we wind up in America. Not just America, but California and Hollywood specifically. We’ve got British actor Eddie who has landed a leading role in a new film. He’s excited but is also facing the reality that threats have been made against his life. His father is prosecuting a case back in England and certain criminal elements aren’t happy about that. They want to kidnap Eddie as leverage to get Eddie’s father to back down.

Enter Lee. Lee has been Eddie’s father (Rupert) best friend forever. Lee’s newly divorced, out of the Met, and in need of direction. He’s not thrilled about being hired as a bodyguard but he’ll do anything to keep Rupert’s son safe. What Lee doesn’t expect, as he and Eddie head to America, is the attraction he feels toward the younger man.

Eddie, on the other hand, has had a crush on Lee his entire life pretty much. Or at least as long as he’s known he was gay. Eddie’s mum, who died tragically, even warned him to be less obvious about his lust for Lee. Now Eddie, still in the closet for the sake of his career, is 24/7 with the man he’s always wanted and never thought he could have.

Except what happens in America stays in America…right?

This is a CF White romance, so I suspect you know the answer. Lee and Eddie have plenty of obstacles to overcome and I loved watching them do it.

I’ll say Piers Ryman has become a favorite narrator of mine since he and CF started putting out audios. He’s done a great job with this series. I didn’t love his American accent, but I’ve heard much worse. In all, he did a fantastic job. It seems this is the last book – which is disappointing - but I’ve certainly enjoyed the ride across the world. Thank you, CF.

Great story, great narration!

I have to admit that age-gap stories will probably never be my favorite thing to read, and a 20+ years gap is a bit much for me but…having said that, if C F White writes it, I'm going to read it and I'm so glad that I did.

I love it when a story gets all of my emotions involved and this one surely did that. I wasn't sure how C F White was going to handle a story written in the US (use American English/vs British, etc.) and I love how she did it. I'm not going to say how because it might be a bit of a spoiler. I'll just say that I think it was the perfect solution for a British author who doesn't normally write books set in the US.

American Dream contains a lot of romance tropes and I was pleasantly surprised that slow-burn was one of them (I love slow-burn!). The first kiss between Eddie and Lee doesn't happen until around 44% into the story and the first sexy time doesn’t' happen until around 57%.

Once again, Piers Ryman did a fantastic job performing this story. I can't remember if I've ever heard him do an American accent before or not but he did a great job with the American voices in this story.